


sank in the deep of your eyes

by pondglorious



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-16
Updated: 2014-03-16
Packaged: 2018-01-15 21:33:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1319941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pondglorious/pseuds/pondglorious
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s her that kisses him this time.<br/>Will thinks that should count for something.<br/>(continuation of the final scene of 2x03.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	sank in the deep of your eyes

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by [x](http://pondglorious.tumblr.com/post/79414321784/im-at-work-so-i-cant-gif-this-but-guys-alana-will/)

It’s her that kisses him this time.

Will thinks that should count for something.

It’s times like this that Alana reminds him of a gypsy, wooing him with crystal balls and incense and promises of a future and a homecoming and a defense that can no longer belong to him - but she genuinely believes, and it’s something Will is beginning to see clearly enough to be mesmerized and jolted by, a feeling interweaved tightly with profound gratitude and affection. It’s a good feeling, a beautiful and pure feeling. Will can count on his fingers how many beautiful and pure things he has seen and felt here, and it isn’t many. Fortunately, she is one of them. 

“You don’t give up,” she’s saying, voice barely above a whisper, maybe talking more to herself than to him, though her eyes don’t avert from his, never avert. “You  _never_  give up. You try until you have nothing left and you  _always_  have something left or you’d be dead. The worst that happens is you start trying in another direction, and sometimes that’s not the worst that happens, it’s the best. But you have to try, Will, no matter what. You always have to try.”

“I’m stubbornly far from giving up at the moment,” he answers skeptically, and is mildly alarmed by the abruptness of her statement. She sounds as if she’d carved through her own muscle and tissue to get to the words underneath, desperate but serene simultaneously.

Will feels boring into his skin how hard it is to look at him and, slipping into her conscience, he knows it hasn’t gotten easier, this depiction of a disheveled, pitiful man in prison grab - it never quite reaches that sense of comfortable deja vu. It’s been even harder for her to look at him without that ache so ever present in her eyes since his stunt last week, the morphing into that sickly, snivelling thing that is a shadow of what he once was, but she looks anyways, never faltering. Guilt stings his mouth like blood, bittersweet triumph mingled with omnipresent agony.

“Of course,” Alana laments, “As we all are. But…just in case. If that ever changes. Even for a second…I want you to remember that.”

They’re quiet for a moment after he nods, hands still clasped. Will is silently thankful for this; Alana’s consistency, her persistence, her admirable faith. For knowing there’s one thing that can’t be changed. Then the words scamper their way up this throat, unafraid and as unguarded as is possible to be with her, because really, who else can he talk unfiltered to: “I was…drugged by my own conscience.  _Someone_ came along and disassembled me, and before I woke up, they tried to rush and put me back together with pieces scattered and missing, like…doll parts. I won’t give up until I find all the pieces.”

“You’re just puzzled. Not broken. We…can make the pieces fit. Together.”

We. Together. The words make him ache, knowing how hopeless they truly are, but before he can allow that ache to turn into a sting that turns into a burn that scorches right through him, Alana is moving in a way that both startles and entices him, distracts and reminds him.

Of course it’s never one or the other. Not with her; triumph is nothing but selfishly morphed guilt, comfort comes with soreness in his chest, half-truths are fortified with the unknown. Not in life; Victory is always tinged with disgrace reflected by the eyes of your opposers, stability is on unstable ground, and what doesn’t kill you makes you want to kill or die.

But if only for a second, the balance is shifted to good; because like her inky angelic counterpart, she leans across the table in a single swift movement, and presses her lips to his.

She kisses him with hands that try not to shake, just as his had, and a mouth that is delicate but somehow sure.  _Alana_ is the one not allowing  _him_ to flinch or pull away, testing  _his_ boundaries, as if  _he_ should be afraid; the irony mocks him.

Ghosts flicker past his eyelids: Beverly, distant, hesitant, freezing like a rabbit in the dark upon contact, as if skin to skin will infuse his madness into her veins like disease. Jack, cold, fierce, and so very conflicted, reflected in his harsh tones and stoic stance. Hannibal…icy, alluring, too close for comfort.

And Alana; warm, unphased and always blessedly implicit, touching his hands, meeting his eyes and now his lips. Not as if she doesn’t recognize his crimes; as if she doesn’t care to incriminate _him._

Their lips feel as if they’re made of bruises, and when they pull back he’s sure there will be marks, purple and blue and red and black to display like a poignant canvas, even though reality tells him this is more of a peck than anything. He can feels himself falling, dark and fast and deep, into a void he is sure makes up the space between every other inch of skin where they aren’t touching.

(The scale is balanced again once he remembers she’s kissing the lips that devoured the ear of her eighteen-year-old-patient.)

(It is subsequently eclipsed when she pulls away, inches from his face, and he can hear her heart pumping blood faster to her veins, and her eyes are so blue they leak into his own and drown out everything else.

If only for a moment.)

When she is seated again, he asks her what that was for.

She apologizes.

“I don’t want to make this harder for us,” she drags a hand through her hair, sighs as if disappointed in her own lack of regret for her actions. “I just wanted to apologize…or make something up to you…or let you know this hasn’t changed.” He sees the subtitles:  _This._ Meaning _us._

“Actually, maybe you’re the crazy one. After all…this isn’t the most stable of settings to choose from.” He pauses for a moment and smiles, authentically, contagious. Alana finds herself mirroring it faster than it’s possible to think about. He continues; “or maybe you’re just fearless.”

The smile shifts to that of her own, small and somber. “You’re not crazy. And I’m not fearless. I am incredibly, remarkably fearful.” Alana grips his hand firmer, forcing his eyes on her, fierce, determined. “ _Will._ I am not afraid of you. I’m afraid  _for_ you.”

“I know,” Will replies, because it’s all he can offer and less than she can reciprocate.

Alana may be standing now on a side of the line that stands in his favor, unable to be pushed or swayed or budged, a side on which both her feet agree to plant themselves firmly. But he wonders how long it’ll be until she starts to glare at the barrier, state lines becoming more alluring. Wonders when she’ll take the first step, then the next, until both feet are now mirrored in their current convictions, and he wonders what he’ll inevitably have to do to place her there.

Will tries to remind himself Alana wouldn’t leave him. But he also remembers; he was never something of Alana’s to leave.

Between them, entwined with chains, their hands have not once slid out of each other’s grasp.


End file.
